Ouroboros
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: No bit of advice worth passing on is ever given only once. Written for the prompt, "John/Mary -you do know you'll have to give everything up?"


_A/n:_ written for the LiveJournal community wordsmeetwings. The prompt was "John/Mary -you do know you'll have to give everything up?" Feedback is much appreciated.

* * *

_Then: April 1977_

It was the fifth time Mary had snuck out through her window to meet John, the second time she had done it that month, and the first time she had been caught.

She had realized that she was busted as soon as her fingers let go of the roof, even before her feet hit the ground, when she saw the lawn from a vantage point that she hadn't had from her bedroom. Or rather, she saw the figure standing at the edge of the lawn. A shadow covered the better part of his body, but her father's face was still visible.

He didn't look too happy.

Mary swore under her breath, and sent a mental apology to John, who was waiting around the corner, and who probably would be waiting all night. Her father had seen her, of course, and there was no way in Hell that he'd let her saunter off to walk into town with her boyfriend.

Instead, she walked over to where he was standing and said the first thing that came into her mind. "Ten seconds on the dot."

He blinked, and she noticed with some satisfaction that she had unsettled him. "Excuse me?"

"Ten seconds. That's how long it takes me to get from the end of the hall to out my bedroom window. Not bad." She crossed her arms, the light jacket she had thrown on not actually doing anything to protect from the early springtime chill.

"And why were you figuring out how long it took you to make your grand escape?" His sarcastic tone made it blatantly obvious that he didn't buy her excuse, and the raised eyebrow served to emphasize that.

Well, if he wasn't going to come right out and call her lie, then neither was she. "Why shouldn't I? If I were to ever be trapped upstairs, I should know what the quickest way out is." Mary met his eyes as she spoke, knowing that she would have flinched under his glare if she didn't face it head on. "Just being prepared. Like you're always telling me to be."

He held her eyes for a long moment, and she could see his struggle: either push the point until she had to admit to the lie, or take the easy way out and pretend that he believed her.

His decision surprised her. "Good for you. Home isn't more secure than anywhere else, remember that. Everything that's out there, they don't care if it's night or day when they get you, or if you're at home or in the White House. You aren't safe." He paused for a moment, as if waiting for the lesson to sink in (it didn't, only because it was already there -she knew that they were never safe, and probably better than her father did; when he went to school, did he look at every new student and wonder if they were human? If they had ever passed a shapeshifter in the street?) and then started walking towards the house. "Come on. I suspect your mom's got dinner on the table by now."

She considered bolting, but only briefly; she'd get to the purlieus of the yard before he caught up, if that. Mentally sending another apology to John -he deserved a bit of consistency, and since she had slighted him only a week or so before for a hunt that was far too close to home for comfort, she felt especially guilty, even if he had accepted her numerous apologies on the first one- she trailed after her father and back into the house.

* * *

Dinner was not a comfortable affair. Her father didn't mention her supposed safety drill, and her mother didn't ask why she had come in with her father, instead of coming down the stairs for dinner, exiting from where she was supposed to have been doing her chemistry homework. And if they were fine with it, than she wasn't about to bring up the subject either, which meant that all three of them were discreetly lowering their eyes from the elephant in the room.

Beyond that, their was almost nothing to say -her father hadn't found their next hunt; her mother's current day job was going well, considering that she had already used up two of her sick days- and so the majority of the meal was spent in silence. To her parents' credit, Mary noticed, they didn't try to tiptoe around the subject or to pretend that everything was normal, or as normal as it usually got for them.

The lack of conversation allowed them all to busy themseves with eating, and the food disappeared quickly. Her father finished first and retreated to his study, probably to review old notes or to flip through one of the several newspaperss they subscribed to to find out why they would be leaving home 'for buisness' next.

Mary waited until he was gone, counting to ten after his study door closed, and stood up. "I have more homework to do. Can I be excused?"

"No." Her mother, Deanna, stood as well. "Help me with the dishes. It's a Friday; you don't need to finish everything tonight."

She gritted her teeth. "It's chemistry -it takes me awhile..."

Deanna sighed. "Mary, sit down."

Rebellion against her father would have gotten him good and pissed, and he would mope around for a day or two, mostly confining himself to his office to avoid confronting her.

Rebellion against her mother would get her put in her room with her mother listening to every creak her footsteps made. Dinner would be delivered to her; restroom use limited to certain time of the day. Her mother loved her, she knew, but she also didn't take any shit.

So, knowing her options, Mary sat down.

"You were sneaking out to meet that Winchester kid, weren't you?"

Of the two parents, her mother wasn't only stricter with punishments -she was also the better lie detector, and the one less likely to deal well with being lied to her face. "Yes, I was." She held her own ground again, just as she had with her father.

"Mary..." her mother didn't look angry, as she had expected her to, only sad, and older than she usually seemed. She knew that hunting aged a person, but her mother usually did a decent job defying that rule, and it was unsettling to see the lines around her eyes being so prominent.

"Yeah?" Unsettled or not, she wasn't backing down.

"Mary, I can tell that you like him. You're not defying us for the sake of defying us this time around. I can see it -you've been happier, and your look when I said his name..." Deanna trailed off. "Mary, I'm glad that you've found someone you like, but I don't want you to get hurt. You need to understand what you're future's going to be like-"

"Mom, we're not getting married. He's my..." there was no way she was admitting that he was her boyfriend, even if her mother probably alreeady knew that. "...I like him, but..."

"Mary, it's okay." Her mother reached across her table and covered her hand in a rare gesture of affection. "I know what it's like to be your age -contrary to what you think- but you have to understand, when you do get serious, or even if it isn't him... Mary, there are certain choices you'll have to make."

"Please tell me we aren't talking about sex, mom, because trust me, I'm well-"

Her mother laughed, something that was even rarer than the physical contact. "No, of course not. I don't want to have to admit it, but I think that, you can handle on your own. What I'm saying is... Mary, you realize that you're going to have to give everything up? You can't hunt and get married. It isn't fair to keep secrets from your partner. Your dad and I, we were both in before we met -hell, that's how we me- but John... he isn't one of us. You can't live two lives, and you can't live one and constantly look back into the other. The connections that you have with the others, and all of the things we're used to -devil's traps under the living room carpets, sprinkling salt before we go to bed- you won't be able to do that, unless you want to bring Winchester into all this as well, and, well..."

"No. Never. He's not cut out for it, and even if he were, I'm not selfish, mom. I would never ask that of him, not ever." She had thought about it, certainly, but never considered it. Not John, and even if he wasn't the man that she spent the rest of her life with (and she knew that she wasn't appalled by the idea of him being 'the one;' she was almost fond of it) she could never ask anybody to give up that much. It wasn't their secret to have to carry.

"Is he worth it, Mary?" Her mother's gaze wasn't just older, it was sadder too, and Mary realized the depth of what she was saying -giving up everything that involved the hunting life would likely include giving up her family. Her mother and her father weren't meant to be involved in a normal life, and John wasn't meant to be involved in anything but that.

She thought of him -his smile, the expression in his eyes as he told her it was okay that her parents had dragged her away, he was just glad that she was alright; he'd been worried, the feel of his hand stroking her hair, and a thousand other things that she couldn't name. "Yeah. It's worth it."

* * *

_Now: January, 1984_

"Look, John," says the other, more experienced hunter. "I'm going to give you some advice. I'd be lyin' if I said that I think you're gonna take it, but it's on my conscience if you don't know all of your options."

John leans back against the Impala, eager to get inside and drive back to the last bit of normality that he has. He isn't eager to face Mary's uncle and explain what he's been doing for the last two months, or to drag the boys away from a place that he knows they could grow to call home, but he'll be a far worse father if he leaves them there, defenseless, with the full knowledge of everything that's out there. "Well, Bobby? Get on with it."

"You got a family out there." Bobby, the man who just saved his ass on the hunt he was on -his fourth total, and the one that brought him so close to being ended with a snap of a werewolf's jaws that he realized it was far past time to get back together with his two sons- nods ahead at the strip of road that leads away from Harvelle's. "Kids."

"And?"

"And I don't know what you're plannin' to do for the future, not exactly, but I heard you asking Ellen about any hunts down in Kansas. You're not gonna give up."

"Damn right I'm not." He doesn't know what Bobby's story is; if he's got his own revenge to pursue on his agenda, or if he's just some sick freak who likes to shoot silver bullets when the moon's full, but he's got an air of expertise to him that says he's been at this for some time, and if he can survive, then there's no reason why John can't manage on his own against the boogeyman.

"Listen to me, Winchester: you've got a choice. The things you've seen, you can't forget them, and I'm not sayin' that you'll ever be looking at life as a big field of friggin' daisies, but you're not so far down the road that you can't turn back. You can get a decent job, raise your kids, do the whole American Dream thing, only being half aware that there are a few things behind the scenes that no one liked to see. You can turn back now, while you're the hunter instead of the hunted. And I don't just mean by all of the creatures of the night -I mean the government too. Most of the folks in there-" he jerks a thumb towards the Roadhouse "-they've got prices on their heads so big that you could get yourself a new car with them, and probably keep her fueled up for a few years after.

"And even if you're lucky and you can make it without being a wanted man, well, you can't live two lives. You're never going to get married, unless you find another hunter out there, and trust me, the chances of that are pretty damn slim. Your kids are always going to be raised as hunters, whether you like it or not. That American Dream is about as likely as you strikin' oil when you're unearthing a corpse. Are you willing to give it all up?"

He considers the question, and all that it reveals about his hastily planned out future. Bobby's barely more than a stranger, but he isn't lying -there's something incredibly earnest in his words, so much that it almost hurts to hear them. He's managed to confirm every fear about the future that John had -he and his boys; they're the only ones on the road ahead of them, and the road isn't lined with white picket fences.

And even if it were, it still wouldn't have Mary standing next to them, her hair flowing down her shoulders, laughing, loving, innocent -there's no choice. Not really. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm willing." For Mary.


End file.
